Pisco is brightened with lemon and pineapple and rounded by a silky sugar syrup, so the drink goes down tasting deceptively like lemonade while a notorious kick waits underneath. Tart, fruity and dangerously easy to drink, it lets the grape spirit's floral perfume drift over the pineapple's tropical sweetness, served bracingly cold in the coupe.
Garnish: Pineapple Wedge, Maraschino Cherry
shaken · Coupe · Up
add
Add pisco, lemon juice, pineapple juice, and simple syrup to a shaker.
shake
Fill with ice and shake until well chilled, about 15 seconds.
strain
Fine-strain into a chilled coupe.
garnish
Garnish with a pineapple wedge and a maraschino cherry.
Pisco Punch belongs to San Francisco, where Duncan Nicol mixed it at the Bank Exchange Saloon in the Montgomery Block during the 1890s, having taken over as owner in 1893. Nicol kept the formula to himself, preparing its pineapple and gum arabic base out of sight, and the story goes that the secret died with him. A batch recipe tied to the name Lannes and dated 1941 — pisco, pineapple gum syrup, lemon and distilled water — later surfaced, offering a glimpse of how it may have been made. Modern bartenders mostly split the pineapple off as fresh juice and shake the drink one serving at a time.